Plainness has its peculiar temptations quite as much as beauty. – George Eliot
For what we call illusions are often, in truth, a wider vision of past and present realities –a willing movement of a mans soul with the larger sweep of the worlds forces –a movement towards a more assured end than the chances of a single life. – George Eliot
In all private quarrels the duller nature is triumphant by reason of dullness. – George Eliot
Delicious autumn! My very soul is wedded to it, and if I were a bird I would fly about the earth seeking the successive autumns. – George Eliot
In fairyland we avoid the word “law”; but in the land of science they are singularly fond of it…. The only words that ever satisfied me as describing Nature are the terms used in fairy books, “charm,” “spell,” “enchantment.” They express the arbitrariness of the fact and its mystery. – G.K. Chesterton, “The Ethics of Elfland,” Orthodoxy